My fifth grade class teacher is the first person I can remember encouraging me to pursue writing. As the winner of the end of year class writing competition Miss K's encouragement has spurned numerous journals, quirky flash fiction and rambling poetry. New Novelist (amongst other things) has managed to help me put that rambling into writing a novel.
Elysium Fields (editing 3rd draft) began as several short pieces of flash fiction that took on a life of their own. Once it became obvious I was writing a novel I started to hatch a plot. This is where I floundered and where New Novelist helped.
I have partaken in some form of reading and writing for most of my literate life. I was the person family and friends came to if they wanted something special written. I was studying literature and communication at university! But as I wrote yet another plot synopsis that went nowhere I came unstuck, writers block. Arghhhh.
So I went searching. I was already a member of several writers sites and familiar with all the good advice sites so this is where I started. And I searched, read, searched and wrote, blogged and read some more. Then, I saw it. A little widget that caught my eye. NEW NOVELIST, NEW NOVELIST, NEW NOVELIST it flashed. What the hey. Normally I ignore all advertising but I wanted something to move me. Maybe New Novelist would be it.
Now not to down play the writing sites and blogs I researched, these are all great and I still spend way too many hours a week reading my favourite blogs and they have helped me in countless ways.
But for $54.99 New Novelist is definitely money well spent.
New Novelist does not do the writing for you, it does not come up with the ideas for you and it most definitely does not offer up an instant novel. What New Novelist does do is help train your creative writing mind, it helps you to build on your writing ideas, structure a readable plot and develop well rounded characters and settings.
The software is a great starting point for a New Novelist. Now that I am writing my third draft I am again writing with my regular word processor, but I have also begun entering ideas for subsequent novels into the program and will begin writing them in due course. In time I imagine I will be confident enough to no longer need New Novelist as a starting block
but as a New Novelist, it has definitely been money well spent.
The Art of the Healing Story
07/12/20090 Comment(s) When I started writing my first novel, ELYSIUM (coming soon), I had no idea that it would turn out to be such a healing process.
As I have discovered this last week, there is a defined art to writing a healing story and these stories are truly inspirational in their simplicity. I can't wait to get stuck into my 3rd draft of Elysium and utilise all of the tips I have learned.
To explain. The source of inspiration for this blog has come from attendance at a Steiner Education conference. I have just had the most amazing week, creatively and inspirational. The week involved singing lessons every morning, 3 separate workshops and 2 different lectures per day, another singing lesson in the afternoon then followed by evenings of performance and sharing.
As you may have guessed one of my workshops was Writing Healing Stories and I was in writers Elysium! What more could an author of inspirational fiction ask for? (the relaxation massage at the end of the week did top it of!).
To put it simply a Healing Story is written with a purpose, typically to resolve disturbing behaviours. GRIEF is a good example. The process of writing Elysium was cathartic to me as a writer and an emotional being caught at a traumatic turning point. My 2nd draft has also proven to be healing for the two dear friends whom I have entrusted proofreading to.
Writing a Healing Story can come quite naturally, as did Elysium, however you can set out with a purpose to write a story which heals.
First take a behaviour which you would like to heal. Anything from teaching children to tidy up after themselves to dealing with a death, abandonment or molestation.
For the purpose of this exercise we will use abandonment. The story I will use as example, Mama Moon, is not my own writing(unfortunately) but it has a beautiful message and I think captures the idea of Healing Stories perfectly. It is about a child whose mother abandoned him to the care of relatives without explanation.
A basic construction tool for writing Healing Stories.
BEHAVIOUR - a disturbing pattern which would benefit from resolution.
METAPHOR(s)- are vital to story writing. They help to build imaginative connections for listeners. Playing both negative(obstacle, temptation) and positive(helper, guide) roles.
JOURNEY - The formative part of the story, an eventful journey will build the tension. It can lead the plot through the behaviour and out again to a balanced resolution. Use obstacle and helper metaphors to achieve this tension. Repetition, rhyme and song can also help to build the tension. It is helpful to remember not to lecture the point directly, leading gently is more conducive to healing.
RESOLUTION- is the restoration of harmony. The resolution should be positive and pro-active, not guilt inducing. Even though the resolution comes at the end of the journey it is helpful to think about this first. (Susan Perrow,2007)
We have our BEHAVIOUR, Abandonment. The next step is to decide what resolution is needed/desired. In this case the RESOLUTION is to rediscover a sense of self worth and love despite the abandonment.
Next think of METAPHORS that could perhaps represent the behaviours & resolution. In this case the author (Alison Brooking) used Mother Moon to represent the mother, Father Sun to represent the guardian left behind and a galaxy of stars to represent her abandoned child. As you can see a metaphor can be anything.
Now finally, the JOURNEY. In Alison's story the child star was close to mother moon, she helped him polish and shine himself so he could shine brightly on all the people and animals in the night time. Child star was eager to shine brightly and loved mother moon for helping him. One night mother moon did not appear and child star was sad, but then he noticed how dark it was without his shine. So polished and shined himself, with out mother moons help and encouraged his brothers and sister stars to do the same. Happy that he could still bring light without mother moon by his side he was encourage to keep shining and promised himself to keep going because in his heart he knew mother moon would return one day soon.
This is a very brief outline of the actual story but as you can see there are many representations of metaphors here that can help to heal. The light, polishing, shining are all positive metaphors for happiness. The cycle of the moon gives hope as well as causing an obstacle. In the full text there are many more metaphors such as father sun, moon beams, a child below which help to move the story along.
A trick when deciding on metaphors is to lable them, if you can, as obstacle, helper, transition. This will keep you on track and help you decide if the metaphor is appropriate. Follow each idea through to the end of the journey briefly to ensure you reach the resolution you desire. It may take a few goes (I'm still trying metaphors for a potty training story!) but do not be discouraged. Keep writing! Now this novice novelist is off to write her book. Good Luck with you writing.
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